What is The Rocket Model™?
The Rocket Model™ is a science-backed approach to help organizations scale effective teamwork and consists of: (1) the Rocket Model framework; (2) Team Assessment Survey; (3) Ignition book; and (4) Team Facilitation materials. The four components are akin to Lego blocks, in that they can be combined in different ways to improve teamwork, such as designing and facilitating team offsites, creating leadership development programs that train leaders how to build teams, as part of executive onboarding or succession planning practices, combined with personality and 360-degree feedback to provide leaders with insights about their team building ability, or help organizations scale effective teamwork.
The Rocket Model™
The Rocket Model™ is built on 20+ years of research on team effectiveness and packages what we know about teams in a practical, easy-to-understand framework. The model has been refined several times based on emerging research, data collected from 3,000 teams, and knowledge gained from designing and facilitating over 600 team offsites. The model helps leaders adopt a common language for building teams. Learn more about the eight components of The Rocket Model™ and the supporting research by downloading this white paper.
Team Assessment Survey (TAS)
This 15-minute online survey provides teams with benchmarking feedback on the eight Rocket Model components. It is designed to be easy to interpret and helps teams have the right conversations about team dynamics and performance. Over 3,000 teams from across the globe have completed the TAS, and benchmarking norms are available for 19 different team types.
Ignition: A Guide to Building High-Performing Teams (Curphy, Nilsen & Hogan, 2019)
Feedback alone is not enough to improve teamwork; leaders and facilitators need tools to address specific issues involving team dynamics and performance. This book provides practical guidance for launching new teams, turning around broken teams, and combining teams as well as step-by-step instructions for 40 team improvement activities. The book chapters and team improvement activities are indexed to the TAS. These activities help teams overcome specific challenges identified in the TAS and include accountability mechanisms to ensure decisions and agreements remain in place.
Team Facilitation Materials
The 40 PowerPoint decks, forms, handouts, and articles needed to facilitate the 40 team improvement activities described in Ignition are available for download.
The Eight Components of High-Performing Teams
Drawing from extensive research and real-world examples, The Rocket Model™ identifies eight critical components that contribute to high-performing teams:
